Fellow DMs, I wanted to get your thoughts on if and how you would do this in a session.
The party is going on a relaxing vacation cruise as a reward for all the good work they have done in the kingdom (and because the players want to just have a fun adventure). As part of this, there is a room of challenges, with a challenge for every attribute. At the end, once they leave the room, the order of their departure is noted, and their stats are changed accordingly. So, if they exit PC1 > PC 2 > PC3, then PC2 gets PC1's stats, PC3 gets PC2's stats and PC1 gets PC3's stats. This is only temporary (until the cruise ends or earlier, if needed). There should not be much combat on this, but plenty of other rolls using most of their stats.
First question - would you ever do this to your players? Why or why not?
Second question - how would you do it in game? I have homebrewed items for every possible variation of room departure so that I can add these to their characters on D&D Beyond as I want it to be a surprise. Would you do something similar or would you just have them override their attributes scores on their character sheets?
Eh... I think the problem is that character stats tend to be built heavily around character class. If everyone randomly swaps stats, then the bard could end up with the Paladin stats and that's fine, more or less, but at the same time the Barbarian could suddenly find themselves with Wizard stats and they can't do anything cool. And your choices as a DM are either make everything they encounter after that point extremely easy with low stakes so players don't feel like they're trapped with terrible stats failing at difficult or stressful tasks, or deliberately don't rebalance and risk one or more player getting the worst possible stats for their build and just feeling worthless for the whole session.
I think that's partly why it's more common, if the DM wants to shake things up in a similar fashion, usually it takes the form of a full-on Freaky Friday body swap. That way they can try out this other character's build, but at the very least they can go in knowing that they'll have the appropriate ability score spread. It's also generally easier to just have players swap character sheets, although that's a bit harder to do on here instead of IRL when everyone can just pass their physical sheet to the other player.
I agree with transmorpher. If you just change stats, but not proficiencies, you’ll end up with a bunch of people who are mediocre at lots of things, but not really good at anything.
Fellow DMs, I wanted to get your thoughts on if and how you would do this in a session.
The party is going on a relaxing vacation cruise as a reward for all the good work they have done in the kingdom (and because the players want to just have a fun adventure). As part of this, there is a room of challenges, with a challenge for every attribute. At the end, once they leave the room, the order of their departure is noted, and their stats are changed accordingly. So, if they exit PC1 > PC 2 > PC3, then PC2 gets PC1's stats, PC3 gets PC2's stats and PC1 gets PC3's stats. This is only temporary (until the cruise ends or earlier, if needed). There should not be much combat on this, but plenty of other rolls using most of their stats.
First question - would you ever do this to your players? Why or why not?
Second question - how would you do it in game? I have homebrewed items for every possible variation of room departure so that I can add these to their characters on D&D Beyond as I want it to be a surprise. Would you do something similar or would you just have them override their attributes scores on their character sheets?
PC's don't change stats, unless under the influence of incredibly powerful magics. Certainly not on a "vacation cruise".
Fellow DMs, I wanted to get your thoughts on if and how you would do this in a session.
The party is going on a relaxing vacation cruise as a reward for all the good work they have done in the kingdom (and because the players want to just have a fun adventure). As part of this, there is a room of challenges, with a challenge for every attribute. At the end, once they leave the room, the order of their departure is noted, and their stats are changed accordingly. So, if they exit PC1 > PC 2 > PC3, then PC2 gets PC1's stats, PC3 gets PC2's stats and PC1 gets PC3's stats. This is only temporary (until the cruise ends or earlier, if needed). There should not be much combat on this, but plenty of other rolls using most of their stats.
First question - would you ever do this to your players? Why or why not?
Second question - how would you do it in game? I have homebrewed items for every possible variation of room departure so that I can add these to their characters on D&D Beyond as I want it to be a surprise. Would you do something similar or would you just have them override their attributes scores on their character sheets?
PC's don't change stats, unless under the influence of incredibly powerful magics. Certainly not on a "vacation cruise".
The DM is saying they do, so they do. Your permission is not needed, and your comment is not helpful.
I agree that changing stats sounds more fun and viable in theory than in practice, but if you think your players might be up for it, maybe consider a body swap encounter instead.
Whether it's due to some choice they make (eating matching chocolates, perhaps?) or a random roll of the dice, their consciousness gets shunted into someone else (or something else, like a party pet or an NPC) and they have to solve a puzzle to leave the room and get back to their normal selves. Could be fun if your players would be mature about it and/or innocently poke fun at each other or laugh at each other's impressions.
The only way I'd allow this is if I also were to give some sort of warning to the players - either in game or OOC. Let them know either vague things like "you will change who you are when you step through the door, live through your friends but yourselves no more" or some kind of obscure riddle/rhyme to hint at what happens.
Or, just tell them outside of the game "I want to run an adventure where you all body swap your stats around. Is that cool with everyone?" That way you can have buy-in from the players rather than it feeling like a DM trap.
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I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
I have done this with my players, and I did it because it was a potential effect of a dungeon section. The difference is that I just had them trade character sheets, which transitioned quite fluidly, and they had to RP as their character in the other character's body. So all the necessary stats were shifted, but the personality traits and such remained the same. It seemed to work out well enough, and was quirky-fun. I gave them advanced notification on the matter that it was a possible temporary effect of the dungeon which I now believe was the right move, thus recommend that.
Fellow DMs, I wanted to get your thoughts on if and how you would do this in a session.
The party is going on a relaxing vacation cruise as a reward for all the good work they have done in the kingdom (and because the players want to just have a fun adventure). As part of this, there is a room of challenges, with a challenge for every attribute. At the end, once they leave the room, the order of their departure is noted, and their stats are changed accordingly. So, if they exit PC1 > PC 2 > PC3, then PC2 gets PC1's stats, PC3 gets PC2's stats and PC1 gets PC3's stats. This is only temporary (until the cruise ends or earlier, if needed). There should not be much combat on this, but plenty of other rolls using most of their stats.
First question - would you ever do this to your players? Why or why not?
Second question - how would you do it in game? I have homebrewed items for every possible variation of room departure so that I can add these to their characters on D&D Beyond as I want it to be a surprise. Would you do something similar or would you just have them override their attributes scores on their character sheets?
PC's don't change stats, unless under the influence of incredibly powerful magics. Certainly not on a "vacation cruise".
Why can't there be powerful magics on a "vacation cruise"? And it is meant to be a fun break from the normal adventuring, so it is temporary. I am okay with the fact that you may not like it - everyone's playing atmosphere is different.
The only way I'd allow this is if I also were to give some sort of warning to the players - either in game or OOC. Let them know either vague things like "you will change who you are when you step through the door, live through your friends but yourselves no more" or some kind of obscure riddle/rhyme to hint at what happens.
Or, just tell them outside of the game "I want to run an adventure where you all body swap your stats around. Is that cool with everyone?" That way you can have buy-in from the players rather than it feeling like a DM trap.
They saw this on the flyer for the cruise:
Skill Challenges - test your strength, speed, agility, intelligence and wisdom against the heroes of renown and be transformed!
I have done this with my players, and I did it because it was a potential effect of a dungeon section. The difference is that I just had them trade character sheets, which transitioned quite fluidly, and they had to RP as their character in the other character's body. So all the necessary stats were shifted, but the personality traits and such remained the same. It seemed to work out well enough, and was quirky-fun. I gave them advanced notification on the matter that it was a possible temporary effect of the dungeon which I now believe was the right move, thus recommend that.
Thought about that but because there are only 2 players (and 1 is playing two PCs), that either means that the less skilled player is playing 2 PCs or the better player is still playing one of his PCs. And, because they have been playing together for so long with these PCs, they would not play them too differently. So, I wanted them to have their own capabilities (spell casting, attacks, languages, etc) and magical items, but altered attributes.
I don't think they'll have an issue with the attribute change, so we will see how it goes.
Just an update - this happened last session. They got through the room and were told they saw a glowing light around them and felt a tingling sensation. Then I loaded the homebrew items and their stats changed. Actually went well, as they got into a murder mystery right after that and laughed about how the fighter is now the smartest guy in the party, the wizard is wonderfully agile, etc.
Awesome! I think a murder mystery is the perfect challenge to give to your players after giving them a change like this, and I think it's also good that you made it very obvious that some kind of change would be happening as part of this event that they went to willingly. I have to say, I was really skeptical about this idea for the reasons I mentioned above, but I'm glad you found a way to do it that makes me want to try this with my players some time.
One of the next big things will be a gladiator's melee -- sort of . They will have been captured in some things a lot like pokeballs (called adventubers) and will be released to fight each other. Well, they will be released, but since the charm component of the adventubers doesn't work, they can do what they want. I am sorta looking forward to seeing how this will work with their new stats, as I suspect that the three NPCs who captured them witll be in for a rude awakening...
It was a pain to homebrew the stat changes. Basically I compared their stats for every possible combination and did a homebrew for each combination and raised/lowered each stat in it. Since we were playing remote, I noted the order and on my other PC I added the homebrew to each of their inventories, asked them to log out, activated it, and had them log back in. At first they didn't notice until I told them that things felt different. After that, they had a blast with it. The wizard got to smack someone around physically and the Blood Hunter was off solving intellectual riddles.
The only way I'd allow this is if I also were to give some sort of warning to the players - either in game or OOC. Let them know either vague things like "you will change who you are when you step through the door, live through your friends but yourselves no more" or some kind of obscure riddle/rhyme to hint at what happens.
Or, just tell them outside of the game "I want to run an adventure where you all body swap your stats around. Is that cool with everyone?" That way you can have buy-in from the players rather than it feeling like a DM trap.
never wait to wash away the old you
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Race: Not Human
Class: Villain
Alignment: Lawful Evil
fun fact: i gain more power the more you post on my forum threads. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
Fellow DMs, I wanted to get your thoughts on if and how you would do this in a session.
The party is going on a relaxing vacation cruise as a reward for all the good work they have done in the kingdom (and because the players want to just have a fun adventure). As part of this, there is a room of challenges, with a challenge for every attribute. At the end, once they leave the room, the order of their departure is noted, and their stats are changed accordingly. So, if they exit PC1 > PC 2 > PC3, then PC2 gets PC1's stats, PC3 gets PC2's stats and PC1 gets PC3's stats. This is only temporary (until the cruise ends or earlier, if needed). There should not be much combat on this, but plenty of other rolls using most of their stats.
First question - would you ever do this to your players? Why or why not?
Second question - how would you do it in game? I have homebrewed items for every possible variation of room departure so that I can add these to their characters on D&D Beyond as I want it to be a surprise. Would you do something similar or would you just have them override their attributes scores on their character sheets?
PC's don't change stats, unless under the influence of incredibly powerful magics. Certainly not on a "vacation cruise".
I think they've got SOMETHING of a point. always have a reason in case of a crazy arcana check by the wizard
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Race: Not Human
Class: Villain
Alignment: Lawful Evil
fun fact: i gain more power the more you post on my forum threads. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
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Fellow DMs, I wanted to get your thoughts on if and how you would do this in a session.
The party is going on a relaxing vacation cruise as a reward for all the good work they have done in the kingdom (and because the players want to just have a fun adventure). As part of this, there is a room of challenges, with a challenge for every attribute. At the end, once they leave the room, the order of their departure is noted, and their stats are changed accordingly. So, if they exit PC1 > PC 2 > PC3, then PC2 gets PC1's stats, PC3 gets PC2's stats and PC1 gets PC3's stats. This is only temporary (until the cruise ends or earlier, if needed). There should not be much combat on this, but plenty of other rolls using most of their stats.
First question - would you ever do this to your players? Why or why not?
Second question - how would you do it in game? I have homebrewed items for every possible variation of room departure so that I can add these to their characters on D&D Beyond as I want it to be a surprise. Would you do something similar or would you just have them override their attributes scores on their character sheets?
Eh... I think the problem is that character stats tend to be built heavily around character class. If everyone randomly swaps stats, then the bard could end up with the Paladin stats and that's fine, more or less, but at the same time the Barbarian could suddenly find themselves with Wizard stats and they can't do anything cool. And your choices as a DM are either make everything they encounter after that point extremely easy with low stakes so players don't feel like they're trapped with terrible stats failing at difficult or stressful tasks, or deliberately don't rebalance and risk one or more player getting the worst possible stats for their build and just feeling worthless for the whole session.
I think that's partly why it's more common, if the DM wants to shake things up in a similar fashion, usually it takes the form of a full-on Freaky Friday body swap. That way they can try out this other character's build, but at the very least they can go in knowing that they'll have the appropriate ability score spread. It's also generally easier to just have players swap character sheets, although that's a bit harder to do on here instead of IRL when everyone can just pass their physical sheet to the other player.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
I agree with transmorpher. If you just change stats, but not proficiencies, you’ll end up with a bunch of people who are mediocre at lots of things, but not really good at anything.
PC's don't change stats, unless under the influence of incredibly powerful magics. Certainly not on a "vacation cruise".
The DM is saying they do, so they do. Your permission is not needed, and your comment is not helpful.
I agree that changing stats sounds more fun and viable in theory than in practice, but if you think your players might be up for it, maybe consider a body swap encounter instead.
Whether it's due to some choice they make (eating matching chocolates, perhaps?) or a random roll of the dice, their consciousness gets shunted into someone else (or something else, like a party pet or an NPC) and they have to solve a puzzle to leave the room and get back to their normal selves. Could be fun if your players would be mature about it and/or innocently poke fun at each other or laugh at each other's impressions.
The only way I'd allow this is if I also were to give some sort of warning to the players - either in game or OOC. Let them know either vague things like "you will change who you are when you step through the door, live through your friends but yourselves no more" or some kind of obscure riddle/rhyme to hint at what happens.
Or, just tell them outside of the game "I want to run an adventure where you all body swap your stats around. Is that cool with everyone?" That way you can have buy-in from the players rather than it feeling like a DM trap.
I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
I have done this with my players, and I did it because it was a potential effect of a dungeon section. The difference is that I just had them trade character sheets, which transitioned quite fluidly, and they had to RP as their character in the other character's body. So all the necessary stats were shifted, but the personality traits and such remained the same. It seemed to work out well enough, and was quirky-fun. I gave them advanced notification on the matter that it was a possible temporary effect of the dungeon which I now believe was the right move, thus recommend that.
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Why can't there be powerful magics on a "vacation cruise"? And it is meant to be a fun break from the normal adventuring, so it is temporary. I am okay with the fact that you may not like it - everyone's playing atmosphere is different.
They saw this on the flyer for the cruise:
Skill Challenges - test your strength, speed, agility, intelligence and wisdom against the heroes of renown and be transformed!
Thought about that but because there are only 2 players (and 1 is playing two PCs), that either means that the less skilled player is playing 2 PCs or the better player is still playing one of his PCs. And, because they have been playing together for so long with these PCs, they would not play them too differently. So, I wanted them to have their own capabilities (spell casting, attacks, languages, etc) and magical items, but altered attributes.
I don't think they'll have an issue with the attribute change, so we will see how it goes.
Thanks for the input though!
Just an update - this happened last session. They got through the room and were told they saw a glowing light around them and felt a tingling sensation. Then I loaded the homebrew items and their stats changed. Actually went well, as they got into a murder mystery right after that and laughed about how the fighter is now the smartest guy in the party, the wizard is wonderfully agile, etc.
Awesome! I think a murder mystery is the perfect challenge to give to your players after giving them a change like this, and I think it's also good that you made it very obvious that some kind of change would be happening as part of this event that they went to willingly. I have to say, I was really skeptical about this idea for the reasons I mentioned above, but I'm glad you found a way to do it that makes me want to try this with my players some time.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
One of the next big things will be a gladiator's melee -- sort of . They will have been captured in some things a lot like pokeballs (called adventubers) and will be released to fight each other. Well, they will be released, but since the charm component of the adventubers doesn't work, they can do what they want. I am sorta looking forward to seeing how this will work with their new stats, as I suspect that the three NPCs who captured them witll be in for a rude awakening...
It was a pain to homebrew the stat changes. Basically I compared their stats for every possible combination and did a homebrew for each combination and raised/lowered each stat in it. Since we were playing remote, I noted the order and on my other PC I added the homebrew to each of their inventories, asked them to log out, activated it, and had them log back in. At first they didn't notice until I told them that things felt different. After that, they had a blast with it. The wizard got to smack someone around physically and the Blood Hunter was off solving intellectual riddles.
never wait to wash away the old you
Race: Not Human
Class: Villain
Alignment: Lawful Evil
fun fact: i gain more power the more you post on my forum threads. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
I think they've got SOMETHING of a point. always have a reason in case of a crazy arcana check by the wizard
Race: Not Human
Class: Villain
Alignment: Lawful Evil
fun fact: i gain more power the more you post on my forum threads. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!